FIFTEEN IMARA
FIFTEEN
IMARA
The pit’s edge is chaos. Bodies and blood and the constant wailing of the dead beneath us. I guide Dena around the worst of it, my hand tight on her arm, my magic stretched thin from the workings I’ve already performed.
The other stock—I can’t save them all. I know this. The chains, the guards, the sheer numbers—even with Kharvek’s rampage creating opportunities, I can’t reach everyone.
But I can reach some.
“You.” I grab a young man stumbling past—stock, maybe twenty, strong enough to run. “There’s a drainage tunnel fifty yards east. Take as many as you can. Don’t stop until you’re beyond the Vale’s boundary.”
He stares at me with blank terror.
“Go.” I shove him toward the tunnel. “Now.”
He goes. Grabs another stock member on his way. Then another. A trickle becoming a stream, survivors fleeing into the wilderness that surrounds the Vale.
The Blood Matron will send hunters. Will track them down one by one. But some might make it. Some might survive.
A fraction of what I wanted. A fraction of what they deserve.
But it’s what I can give them.
Dena clings to my hand as we skirt the pit’s southern rim. The churning water below us glows brighter now—all that death feeding into it, power accumulating in the depths. The bone formations beneath the surface seem to shift and reach, skeletal fingers grasping at the new offerings.
“Imara.” Dena’s voice is small. “What’s happening?”
“We’re leaving.” I pull her faster. “We’re getting out.”
“But—the Sanctum—my training—”
“Forget the training.” I stop. Turn. Make her meet my gaze. “The Sanctum is a lie. Everything they told you about your purpose, your potential—lies. You’re not stock. You’re not a resource. You’re a child, and you deserve to live.”
Her eyes shine.
“Do you understand?” I grip her shoulders. “Dena. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
She nods. A tiny, terrified motion.
“Good.” I straighten. “Now run.”
We’re almost clear when the blood-wards surge.
The power hits me first—a wave of crimson energy that crashes against my senses, makes my own scarification burn with reflected force. The wards aren’t just active; they’re amplified. Someone is pouring power into them, boosting their reach beyond anything I’ve felt before.
Then I hear her voice.
“Kharvek. Imara.”
The Blood Matron. Her words echo from everywhere and nowhere, carried by the wards themselves, impossibly clear despite the chaos around us.
“I’m not angry.”
I freeze. Dena whimpers beside me.
“I’m proud.”
The pit’s glow intensifies. The screaming of the dead grows louder, their eternal wail twisted into what sounds almost like applause.
“You’ve shown me what you could produce.”
My blood runs cold.
She knows. She’s known this entire time—known about the modifications, known about our alliance, known about everything we’ve been building in secret. And she’s not trying to stop us.
She’s pleased.
“Come back.”
Kharvek appears at my side. Blood-drenched, breathing hard, scars still blazing with stolen power. He heard it too. His expression has gone rigid.
“Let me help you realize your potential.”
The words hang in the air. Promise and threat and something else—something hungry, something that makes my stomach turn.
She wants what we could produce. Not just the rebellion, not just the violence.
Us. What we could make.
“Move.” Kharvek’s voice is rough. “Now.”
We run.
The Vale’s wilderness swallows us.
Beyond the Sanctum’s immediate territory, the land turns barren—centuries of the clan’s influence leaching life from the earth until nothing grows, nothing survives, nothing remains but rust-colored soil and jagged rocks and the constant pressure of residual magic.
Dena stumbles. I catch her before she falls.
“Keep going.” I adjust my grip, half-carrying her now. “We need distance.”
“Can’t—” She’s gasping, small body pushed beyond its limits. “Can’t keep—”
“You can.” I won’t let her stop. Won’t let her become another name I carry, another failure I catalog in the dark hours. “A little further. Just a little further.”
Kharvek ranges ahead, scouting the path, his massive form somehow silent despite his size. Every few minutes he circles back—checking on us, checking for pursuit, his attention never quite resting.
The survivors scatter behind us. Those who made it out of the pit’s chaos—maybe twenty, maybe less—fleeing in different directions, taking different routes, hoping that dispersal will improve their odds.
Most of them will die. The Matron’s hunters are thorough.
But not all of them. Not if we’re lucky. Not if the chaos we’ve created buys enough time.
We reach a ridgeline overlooking a dead valley. Kharvek signals a halt, and I lower Dena to the ground with trembling arms.
“Rest.” I brush hair from her face. “Just for a moment.”
She curls into a ball, exhausted, and closes her eyes.
I straighten. Find Kharvek watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
“You weren’t supposed to do that.” He keeps his voice low. Controlled. “We weren’t ready.”
“I know.”
“The plan—”
“The plan doesn’t matter.” I meet his stare. Hold it. “She was nine years old. They were going to throw her into that pit.”
He’s silent. The scars on his arms have dimmed, power settling back into dormancy, but his body is still coiled with tension.
“You gave up everything we built. For one child.”
“I gave up nothing.” I step closer. “The plan was always about stopping them. Saving people. If I can’t save one child when she’s standing right in front of me, then what’s the point?”
His expression shifts. That hunting focus softening into what I can’t categorize.
“You’re going to get us killed.”
“Probably.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“We were always going to die doing this.” I reach up. Touch his blood-splattered face. Feel the furnace warmth of him beneath my palm, the power still thrumming just beneath his skin. “The only question was whether we’d die for what mattered.”
He goes completely still beneath my touch. The particular stillness of a predator that has chosen not to move—not surrender, not distance. A decision made in the space between one breath and the next.
“She matters.” He’s not asking.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I think about the question. Really think about it.
“Because if I can save her—if I can give her the chance I never had—then maybe all of this matters.”
His jaw works. An expression moves across his scarred face that I don’t have a name for.
“You’re not what I expected.” The words come out rough. Reluctant.
“Neither are you.”
We stand there in the dead valley, the Matron’s words still echoing in my skull, the child I’ve saved sleeping at our feet. His blood on my skin. My hand on his face. The wreckage of everything we planned scattered behind us.
I should be calculating next steps, contingency plans, ways to salvage what’s left of our rebellion.
Instead, I’m thinking about his mouth. The way it felt against mine in the bone garden. How much I want to feel that again, despite the chaos, despite the danger, despite everything.
His nostrils flare. Scenting the air. Scenting me.
He knows. Can probably smell the desire on my skin, read it in my quickened breath.
Neither of us moves.
“The Matron.” He lowers his voice. “What she said—”
“I know.”
“She wants—”
“I know.” I pull my hand back. Force myself to step away. “We need to move. Find shelter. Figure out what comes next.”
He lets me go. That intent gaze following my retreat.
“This isn’t over.” Not a threat—a promise. Something heavy and hungry beneath the words.
“No.” I turn to check on Dena. “It’s not.”